From: Chuck Kuecker (ckuecker@mcs.net)
Date: Tue Jun 12 2001 - 04:46:08 MDT
At 12:02 AM 6/12/01 -0700, you wrote:
>Doug Skrecky wrote:
>
> > Yet another ad claimed "Freezing Food is Fun!".
>
>Oh boooooy! Mom, lets freeze some foooood!
>
>Kids must have been easily entertained in those days. Consider
>the Christmas ballet The Nutcracker. The little girl gets a
>nutcracker for Christmas. Talk about a lame toy! Then
>she goes on to imagine all kinds of games with this stupid
>kitchen implement. Its like a prehistoric virtual reality,
>except without a computer. A (virtual)^2 reality?
>
>Life must have been hell in the old days. spike
Physically, quite possibly, depending on your wealth. Medically,
definitely. Intellectually, I don't think so.
People (I am talking common folks, by and large) spent much more time
thinking as kids and virtually NO time being "entertained". They had to use
their imaginations to populate a play world, rather than just absorbing it
from the media or a computer game.
I am continually amazed at the level of competence required, for instance,
for children of the 1890's to graduate elementary school. Subjects that
would confound many of today's PhD candidates, and mostly taught in a
primitive schoolhouse in a small town. Of course, many kids never made it
past third grade, but I bet they got as much real knowledge in those three
years as our present sixth graders, or quite possibly, high schoolers.
The kids of yore spent much time reading when they were not playing games
rich in imagination and physical activity, and almost totally free of adult
interference. No structured play at all, hardly any organized team sports,
even. No "spectator sports" at all, unless one lived in a big city, up
until the 1880's or so.
It takes a lot more individual brain activity to produce a "virtual
reality" akin to the Nutcracker than it does to sit in a room and soak up
any of today's entertainments.
Chuck Kuecker
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